What Liberals Got Wrong About 1989
Abstract: In the wake of the Cold War, Francis Fukuyama portrayed the “last man” as free but devoid of ambitions, polite but unheroic, somebody castrated by the satisfaction of his desires but a very agreeable fellow. He is married to democracy, but we suspect no longer in love with it. The “last man” of this lecture is a different one. He has arrived when history has returned. He is anxious and mistrustful. He is overtaken by demographic anxiety. He thinks he lives in the dregs of time. He tends to believe that the next elections should be the last elections.
Why is he so terrified? And where does he come from? What can we expect from him? And how will he change our idea of democracy?
Ivan Krastev is the chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences, IWM Vienna. He is a founding board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the Board of Trustees of the International Crisis Group, and a member of the Board of Directors of GLOBSEC. He is a Financial Times contributing editor and the author of Is it Tomorrow, Yet? How the Pandemic Changes Europe (Allen Lane/Penguin, 2020); The Light that Failed: A Reckoning (Allen Lane/Penguin, 2019), co-authored with Stephen Holmes and winner of the 30th Annual Lionel Gelber Prize; After Europe (UPenn Press, 2017); Democracy Disrupted. The Global Politics on Protest (UPenn Press, 2014) and In Mistrust We Trust: Can Democracy Survive When We Don’t Trust Our Leaders? (TED Books, 2013).